t420 owner looking to upgrade

I bought a t420 a few years ago. It was my first thinkpad laptop and now I know can never use any other brand again! Its been a great electronic companion meeting all my technical needs. Now I need to upgrade and I cant seem to decide from the lineup that exists right now. Below are my options, any advice would be very helpful!

What I use the laptop for
I live in chrome so alot of browsing and use of for GTD stuff like keep and trello. Full use of the MS office sweet including visio and project. I watch alot of movies both streaming and locally. Use a few engineering design apps like enterprise architect. I do some LIGHT game development just to get familiar with the latest game engines. I do some LIGHT c++ development just to keep myself up to speed as I have put down my engineering hat for sometime now.

My choices
X1 Carbon, T460 and T460s. They each seem to have there pros and cons. Cost isnt a big issue but its more about getting the best value.

Im leaning toward the t460 so that I can have the ability to upgrade the components in the future. The X1s light footprint is extremely enticing though since I travel so much. T460s seems to be in between the 2 but not really the best at anything.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!!

 

Do you need another laptop? Having owned almost all thinkpad models in the past and still using a t420 I feel you might save some money staying with the t420 and you'd not be missing out by 'upgrading". I've had the x1 wQHD and the t450 and the previous version of each. They only good thing about the newer ones is the high resolution. As I like to learn many different things, I can have a tutorial video in one corner, a pdf book in another corner and a few virtual machines I'm learning on or testing without any or much overlap.

The t420 dual performance was on par with my t450, avoid the low voltage cpu. A quad core t420 blows my t450 away.

The t420 has 3 easy access drives, easy access ram, all internals are very quickly accessible, obviously the keyboard is better. Can put in a quad core and use throttlestop to manage the heat. Esata is nice feature. Haven't used or viewed a t460s so I can't say. Also you can increase the t420 screen real estate (in win7, doesn't work in 8.1 or 10) by editing the registry and 'logpixels" setting.

I'm in no place to judge as I try out a laptop for 6 months and sell it to try the next new thing. Only ones I've kept for a long time are my x61t, t61p, t420, w520, w530, m4800.

 

What is the condition of your T420? any upgrades? new is nice but not necessarily better (my opinion)i have two T420's one for me and one for my other half,mine has 3 ssd in it (Msata+main and caddy)16gb ram,i got her one because she has epilepsy and the T420 is tough she has dropped that thing more times than i can count, outside of a few scratches it stills works great.Just my opinion i could be wrong

 

Having owned a T420 in the past I can comment:
- The T420 LCD panels are crap, the IPS technology on a LCD screen makes the colors seems much more vibrant and a joy to use, FHD or WQHD.
- I still miss my T420 keyboard, I'm restoring my 4:3 T61 as a collector Thinkpad just because of the keyboard and the form factor, but you wouldn't notice since you're already using 16:9 ratio LCD
- The comments about a quad core T420 blowing away a T460 is spot-on. If you want performance oriented CPU then get the T460p although it is not that slim compared to the T460 but you mentioned you travel a lot so I think the T460s maxed out at 24GB can serve you well. The T460 goes up to 32GB RAM and uses standard 2.5" SSD SATA drives

 

Wow! I would have never thought most of the responses would suggest that I dont upagrde. You all are right, its been tough to find a reason to upgrade minus the small form factor and the high res screens. I dont *need* to upgrade but darn it I want to because I want a new toy.

Any thoughts on x1 vs t460 vs t460s?

 

The T460 is the thickest, biggest and heaviest of the three. It is the most expandable in terms of RAM, two RAM slots, its still using DDR3 RAM though. T460 lacks the WQHD option, the FHD IPS screens used in the T460 are severely outclassed by the WQHD displays available on X1 Carbon and T460s. Unlike T460s and X1 Carbon, the T460 uses 2.5" SSDs/HDDs and does not support M.2 NVMe SSDs. So in that sense its outdated. Also, it still has the old swipe-type fingerprint reader. T460s and X1 Carbon have the new touch-fingerprint reader, which works faster and better. The biggest advantage of the T460 is the PowerBridge battery system, which allows you to use a 6 cell 72 Wh battery for up to 95 Wh of battery capacity. If you want or need the longest battery life, this is definitely a big plus.

The X1 Carbon is the thinnest and lightest of the bunch. Its less accessible, you can change the SSD, but the RAM is soldered down and the keyboard is not easily replaceable. X1 Carbon uses the best materials and has the better FHD screens. Unlike T460(s), it does not have Ethernet, a full-size SD card slot or the mechanical docking port.

T460s is really the best of both worlds in most ways. You can upgrade the RAM, since it has 4 GB soldered down + one RAM slot. It does have a replaceable keyboard, as well as Ethernet, a full-size SD Card slot and the mechanical docking port. Its not as portable as the X1 Carbon, but much lighter, thinner and smaller then the T460. T460s uses the same WQHD displays as the X1 Carbon.

In general, I like to recommend the T460s. X1 Carbon I would only recommend if you really want the thinnest & lightest. T460 only if you need 32 GB RAM and the best battery performance.